NEWS RELEASE — 2015 OVATION AWARDS NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED

2015 LA STAGE ALLIANCE OVATION AWARDS
NOMINEES ANNOUNCED

EBONY REPERTORY THEATRE &
CENTER THEATRE GROUP LEAD WITH 14 EACH,
WALLIS ANNENBERG CENTER FOR
THE PERFORMING ARTS FOLLOWS WITH 13,
LA MIRADA THEATRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS &
SACRED FOOLS THEATER COMPANY TIE WITH 10 EACH

Nominees for the 2015 LA STAGE Alliance Ovation Awards were announced on Thursday, September 24 on @ This Stage Magazine [ThisStage.la]. This year’s Ovation Awards ceremony will take place Monday, November 9 at the Ahmanson Theatre at The Music Center. The curtain will rise at 7:30pm.

Ebony Repertory Theatre and Center Theatre Group tied with 14 nominations each, followed by Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts with 13, and La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts and Sacred Fools Theater Company, tied with 10 each. Ebony Repertory garnered all 14 of their nominations for The Gospel at Colonus; Center Theatre Group received nominations for Chavez Ravine: An L.A. Revival (7) and Luna Gale (1) at the Kirk Douglas Theatre; Bent (3), The Price (1), and Immediate Family (1) at the Mark Taper Forum; and The Trip to Bountiful (1) at the Ahmanson Theatre. Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts received 11 nominations for their production of Deaf West Theatre’s Spring Awakening (Deaf West’s original intimate theatre production received four nominations), Love, Noël: The Letters and Songs of Noël Coward (1), and Best Season; La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts received nominations for Carrie The Musical (5), Billy Elliot the Musical (1), Mary Poppins (1), Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice, A Musical (1), Good People (1), and Best Season; and Sacred Fools received nominations for The Behavior of Broadus (9) and Astro Boy and the God of Comics (1). Along with La Mirada and the Wallis Annenberg, Best Season nominations went to Los Angeles LGBT Center, Rubicon Theatre Company, and The Theatre @ Boston Court.

Ovation Honors, which recognize outstanding achievement in areas that are not among the standard list of nomination categories, have been awarded to Mat Sweeney and Ellen Warkentine (Music Composition for a Play, The Temptation of St Antony at Four Larks), Mike Mahaffey (Fight Choreography, She Kills Monsters at Loft Ensemble), and Ted Blegen (Puppet Design, She Kills Monsters at Loft Ensemble).

For the 2014-2015 voting season, there are a grand total of 203 nominations for 73 productions presented by 45 companies. There were 297 total productions registered from 118 companies. Of those productions registered, 72 were Ovation Recommended, identified during their runs as scoring in the top quarter of all productions in the Overall Production categories. [A COMPLETE LIST OF NOMINEES IS AVAILABLE AT ThisStage.la.]

Founded in 1989, the LA STAGE Alliance Ovation Awards are the only peer-judged theatre awards in Los Angeles. Voters are Los Angeles theatre professionals who are chosen each year, through an application process, by the Ovation Rules Committee. The list of nominees is determined by a tabulation of scores conducted by Green Hasson Janks. This year’s Ovation Awards eligibility period ran from September 1, 2014 through August 30, 2015.

LA STAGE Alliance is a nonprofit arts service organization dedicated to building awareness, appreciation, and support for the performing arts in Greater Los Angeles. Their programs are sponsored in part by Green Hasson Janks, Ken Werther Publicity, Sony Pictures, The Shubert Foundation, Arts:Earth Partnership, The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, NBC Universal, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Dew Foundation, Baker’s Man Productions, California Arts Council, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Sheri and Les Biller Family Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Walt Disney Parks & Resorts Creative Entertainment.

Variety is the media sponsor for this year’s Ovation Awards ceremony.

09-24-15

FOR A COMPLETE LIST OF NOMINEES, CLICK HERE

The Sound of Music! (LAArtsOnline.com)

The Sound of Music opens September 20 at the Ahmanson Theatre

The Sound of Music!

By Ken Werther
Photo Courtesy of Center Theatre Group

Now considered a classic and unarguably one of the world’s best loved musicals, The Sound of Music opened on Broadway in November, 1959 and ran well into 1963 for a total of 1443 performances. The last show written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, it starred Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel and won five Tony Awards including Best Musical (in a tie with Fiorello!) … and you certainly don’t need me to tell you that in 1965 it was made into a film which remains, to this day, the most successful movie musical in history. Little known fact that The Sound of Music was originally conceived as a play that would feature songs from the repertoire of the real-life Trapp Family Singers. But during the show’s development it became clear to the creators that the story would be better told with original music. Several of the songs in the show have become standards: “Edelweiss,” “My Favorite Things,” “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” “Do-Re-Mi,” and of course, “The Sound of Music.”

A lavish new production directed by three-time Tony Award-winner Jack O’Brien will be launching a North American tour at the Ahmanson Theatre this month. For several generations of folks who only know The Sound of Music as a movie, this will be an exciting opportunity to see how it all began.

The Sound of Music is running at the Ahmanson Theatre September 20 – October 31st.

“What the Butler Saw” (LAArtsOnline.com)

www.laartsonline.com/theatre/
By Ken Werther
Graphics Courtesy of CTG

Twisting plot lines, mistaken identities, slamming doors, blackmail, sexual innuendo, subversive wit, and an outrageous lack of appropriateness… you’re talking my kind of entertainment! Joe Orton’s full-throttle farce What the Butler Saw is the last play written by England’s legendary playwright before his untimely death in 1967 at age 34. Center Theatre Group brings us this comic masterpiece as the last production of the Mark Taper Forum’s 2014 season.

The original production of What the Butler Saw opened in London on March 5, 1969. The play, a timeless tale of sex and repression in a culture gone mad, was decried at the time as scandalous for its character’s raging libidos and rampant mockery of morality. In spite of a small body of work that also included television and radio plays, Joe Orton emerged as one of the seminal playwrights of the 20th century—a direct successor to Oscar Wilde, William Congreve, and Noel Coward. Orton’s other well-known plays are Entertaining Mr. Sloane and Loot, which were presented in repertory, directed by John Tillinger, at the Mark Taper Forum in 1987. Tillinger, a leading interpreter of Orton’s work, returns to direct the savagely funny Butler.

For me, there is nothing more delicious in the theatre than a great farce impeccably directed and performed, and it doesn’t happen often enough. This play is one of the best. I’ve got my tickets and I’m ready to laugh!

What the Butler Saw runs November 12 – December 21 at the Mark Taper Forum.